Getting Started:

Many people make the mistake of thinking that since they are attempting to learn to speak a foreign language they must enroll in some form of formal learning program. This is not necessarily true. If you are the type of person who learns best through formal instruction than by all means take advantage of the myriad opportunities available through your local colleges and universities; almost any secondary learning establishment will have a foreign language program in which you can enroll.
There are, however, many drawbacks to attempting to learn to speak Spanish through formal classroom methods. The simple fact of the matter is that college Spanish classes divide their curriculum carefully so as not to overwhelm the average college student, who is attempting to take Spanish on top of a host of other classes. This means that your learning is going to be limited to what it is that they want to teach you, and you are probably going to be in the program for years before you can develop true fluency. This has two major drawbacks. First and foremost, there is time. You probably want to learn to speak Spanish far sooner than four or five years from now. Entering into a progressive Spanish program is going to require at least that amount of time.
Secondly, there is cost. College courses are not an inexpensive proposition. Even in a community college it is going to cost you several hundred dollars to enroll in a single Spanish class. Multiply that sum by several years and you are probably going to start to feel your enthusiasm for this endeavor begin to wane; after all, who wants to take on a challenge that is going to result in their handing over a large portion of their financial resources to a dispassionate academic institution?
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is the fact that most academic establishments go about the process of teaching a student to speak a foreign language in the most difficult manner possible. Remember when you were first learning to speak English? How did you learn? Did your mother sit you down with a vocabulary list and insist that you learn to associate different words with various objects, with a quiz to be given at the end of the week?
Certainly not! You learned to speak English by hearing it and associating it with various objects in your environment. As you grew, your environment and vocabulary grew with you until you had a firm grasp on the English language and could communicate easily with those around you. Only then did you attempt to learn to read and write. Understanding the language made learning to apply it to paper much simpler. Classroom environments insist on teaching a student to read and write the language directly alongside learning to speak it, leaving very little room for errors in grammar or translation. Consequently, most students do not truly grasp the language, and within months of leaving the classroom will have forgotten everything that they have learned.
For the average citizen attempting to take a language class is not the best choice (although if you have already gained some mastery of the Spanish language this will present you with an excellent opportunity to broaden your horizons). It is much simpler (and therefore much more effective) to learn the Spanish language in the same manner as you did English. You will learn it from your environment.
Of course, chances are that you don’t have several years to learn a language in the same manner as you did when you were a child, and if you are living in a primarily English speaking country you are going to find it very difficult to learn to speak Spanish from your environment. Nevertheless, it has been proven to be much more successful to learn a language in this manner than through formal teaching, and therefore the responsibility is going to fall solely on your shoulders. Your success and the amount of fluency you will gain in the Spanish language is going to depend entirely on the amount of time and effort that you are willing to put into it.
Several years ago it was discovered that people could best learn a language through the process of immersion (yes, it is rather frightening that it took them that long to realize that people living and working in a foreign country picked up the native language much more quickly than those who studied it in a more formal manner in their own residence). The process of immersion means that the individual who is attempting to learn is surrounded by the language, so much so that it plays a role in everything that they see or do throughout the course of their daily life. If you will recall, you heard the English language and saw writings in English everywhere around you when you were a child. If you were to be picked up and placed into a Spanish speaking country you would learn the language very quickly as a matter of necessity.
Since it is a fairly safe bet that if you are reading this you do not live in a Spanish speaking environment, there are a couple of tricks to help you to implement the immersion method in your own home. You are going to have to remember, however, that there is no instant fix or five minute method to learning to speak a language. This is the trap that many individuals fall into when they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in language learning materials. It is going to take time, patience and perseverance if you are to succeed.
First, remember that the goal of the immersion method is to teach you to first speak the language, then to read it. Since as we mentioned before the Spanish language is written in precisely the same manner in which it is spoken (we’ll get into that in greater detail later) making the transition from one to another is going to be very simple once you have mastered Spanish vocabulary. To that end, you want to surround yourself with the Spanish language as much as possible.